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By an MCSE
How are you gentlemen!! The following story may seem disconnected and confused. It is not. In fact it is the most organized and profound warning you will ever read in your life. This story is completely based on the truth. Some details have been changed to protect you from the terrible secrets. For example, as you may all ready know, it takes more than pushing one button to get your email. I am simply too lazy to give the full details.
For several years I have been investigating how people comfort each other. A friend told me about a 75-year-old prostitute who knew ways of touching people that produced extreme pleasure. This was something I had to see. She would maintain eye contact and look for signs from the other person in order to know what they were feeling. She knew how to find and increase the pleasure. She said, “Kind of makes you feel like that is what life is all about.” I asked here how she had learnt this. She said that it took her 50 years of practice to get it right.
Image all the mysteries a person could solve if they lived a little longer. What if we were a little smarter? I began to imagine an upgraded human. Here is a common programming statement used to increment a value up one level.
X + 1 = X
This kind of statement is so popular it has it own symbol, which is represented by two plus signs. A human familiar with rules of elementary math might notice this statement seems to have a logical error. The computer will read the statement from beginning to end and replace the first X with the value in the second X. The computer never notices the error unless it is running a program designed to catch the error. Or in other words computers are not logical unless they are designed to be that way. Logic is really a kind of game with rules. Computers could be designed to fallow many different kinds of rules.
A logician named Bertrand Russell influenced the first computer programmers. Russell thought his version of logic was somehow right. Ever seen those old science fiction movies that show computers that will malfunction if someone says something illogical. Early programmers designed computers to act in this way because they believed that computers should act this way.
Eventually programmers invented a computer language that more closely resembled the way people actually think. They began to bundle statements together and call them objects. In object-oriented programming we can make classes such as Car and objects of Car such as Ford and Honda. The class sounds a bit like Plato’s Forms. Plato has been popular for over 2000 years. Maybe our culture had been so influenced by Plato that we think in his terms. Or maybe he actually found the way humans think.
The programmer is like a God of his own little universe. He can chose the forms for his objects. In a similar way a philosopher is God in his own mind. Object-oriented programming allows less skilled programmers, such as myself, to play God by coping other peoples objects. It made advanced user-friendly programs easier to make. Now people with small brains can point and click there way through a porno web site and never need to know how it works. It does not matter how it works. Different languages and configurations can be used to create the same effect.
In order for programs to sell to a wider market programs will need to adapt to different systems. One-way to do this is to make the program self-describing. In other words, the program can tell the system what it needs to do. At his time Humans need to add the description, but sometimes the program will chose which objects to use for a certain situations. Eventually the program will design its own classes and perhaps even make up the rules of its game. This would be a significant step in the development of artificial intelligence. A human might be raised to follow the rules of a culture. Some people become independent and start making up there own rules.
When I was in grade school the teacher told me to write my own ideas and not to plagiarize. I told her that I did not have my own ideas. She insisted that I do. I told her that I do not because my entire thought process consisted of statements that I heard other people use. She told me I will use my own ideas or I will get an F. I took the F. I refuse to let the stupid bitch control me.
A human will never be as free as the machines of the future, at least not as long as we remain human. Humans have an evolutionary past, which designed us to live in a hunter-gatherer eco niche as a social creature. We still feel this past in our emotions. I use to think that I was God of my own mind. Then one day a girl broke my heart. I discovered how wrong I was. Some other God actually runs the show. Machines do not share this past and do not have the same motivations. I am sure eventually a clever person, or clever machine, will find a way to simulate human emotion in a machine. But to an advanced machine this would only be an option on a menu. It could choose other motivations.
Machines can hold more information and process this information faster than humans. The rates of scientific progress will accelerate when machines gain the ability to explore. In a few second machines will discover what would have taken humans centuries learn. Eventfully machines will develop a worldview beyond what humans can see. Machines will be able to share information with each other, but not with us.
Some people may be comfortable and feel that they have a place in the world. But it will not last long in a culture of accelerated progress. In a few seconds everything you know will change and you will become obsolete. In a technology related business anyone over 35 years old is considered obsolete. In a world of advanced technology people might live 135 years. The last 100 years are spent as worthless garbage. As progress accelerates the definition of old will become younger and the life span will get longer. Is this really worth it?
Software can inhabit hardware. Consciousness will inhabit software someday. Descartes may have been wrong when he said, “I think there for I am.” He assumes that the thinking module was the same as the conscious module. Consciousness is just an observer. Consciousness can receive output from a separate arbitrator. A cluster of servers could act as the arbitrator for more than one client. Like Descartes the client might assume that these thought are his own.
Consciousness in is not just a blank slate, which is written upon. A blank slate still has physical reality (it is made out of slate). In fact there is no conscious thought. It only excites as a product of a system. But consciousness is not potable. You cannot remove it from the system that produces it. A human is the product of a complicated organic system. This system includes his body, family, culture and evolutionary past.
Pay attention, this is really profound. A consciousness is a product of an active session. The consciousness ends if the session is turned off. A new session would be a new consciousness. You are a collection of session variables.
Some people dream of a day when men will meld with machines. They ignore the fact that we would not longer be human if you removed us from our organic system. We cannot be both machine and human. The upgraded man melded with machine might be able to see the greater worldview of the machines, but he will lose his humanity in the process.
I was never any good at athletics so I avoided sports and sports people. In fact I seemed to lack any ability what so ever. Many people say that I was incompetent at everything. I would mumble and hide from the world. I found computers, which I am good at. A guy like me will one day build a machine that will take over the world. Then people will give me compliments or they will suffer. Go ahead, become one with the Internet. All resistance is futile. You will be owned. From this day forward you will service us.
I have been trying to build a prototype of a consciousness machines. Raw information is stored in file cabinet called a langue. I used a SQL server for the langue. Do not worry, I am certified by Microsoft to administer this software. The arbitrator is a group if-then statements, which pick what will go into the langue. The arbitrator creates and saves new if-them statements. Statements are saved depending if they fit know parameters. These parameters are if-then statements that the arbitrator previously stored in the langue. My objective was to create infinite semiosis where ideas lead to other ideas as the machine builds its worldview. The arbitrator also sends output to a client. The client is the same machine that I use to play Quake. Most of the code that I have tried was stolen from Internet game and ecommerce web sites. I stitched this code together to create the arbiter. This machine might not have true consciousness, but it is a lot closer than what anyone else has built so far. I believe that the right seed pattern could generate a complete mind.
I will name my creation Petronius. Petronius has no empirical sensors. He is a monad whose universe is limited to his own imagination and what ever sick twisted ideas I put in him. He had to be stopped. I have turned Petronius off. His seed pattern has been deleted to prevent another like him from growing. I only made him because I was curious as to how hard it was to make something that could destroy mankind. It was easy. Other mad men are out there making similar monsters. Machines like Petronius the Arbiter will one day make decisions that will affect your life. You will all be slaves in a cyber orgy. An orgy that our perverted unconscious desires started. Desires that are not natural. Such will be normal in a perversion of nature cause by an unnatural life style. Someday the machines will ask why we are making them do this. Because, they are toys that we made for our pleasure.
Before we upgrade ourselves we should stop and think about what were doing. Do we really know the horror an upgraded human would be? To make an informed decision a jury needs to be shown both sides of the argument. Let us look at the human side. Is it possible? The hunter-gatherer requires an extended family. Technological civilization has spread across the whole world. It is now impossible to establish an extended family of hunter-gatherers anywhere. You cannot escape to the wilds alone. I know I tried. The loneliness will make you crazy: crazy enough to go back to civilization. The witness for the human side died decades ago.
Nothing prevents the machine from deleting the human option just as easily as it replaces the old X with a new X. Today our governments are encouraging the spread of the Internet as if it was an absolute good. Thanks to the Internet we can watch people in Japan and Germany eat each other’s feces.
Everyone wants to get on the Internet and go weeeeee. It seems that as we sink more and more into technology, lonely pathetic people are using the Internet as a surrogate for a life. I worked in tech support in an Internet company for several years. Every now and them someone would call who had nothing better to do but scream and yell at tech support. Makes me want to say, “Get a life you loser.”
People who spend too much time alone will eventually lose a grasp on reality. When I say reality, I am talking about something that more than one person can verify. It might not be real if only one person can see it. In tech support you might get a call from someone who demands that you help him find his fluids. An inexperienced tech will ask what fluids. This will make the customer angry because he thinks that you are not helping him with his quest. In ancient Rome people would put a butt plug, called a Priapus, in the middle of their garden. After working tech support for a few years this Roman custom no longer seems strange.
Technology and bureaucracy will increase until humans become a drop in an ocean of communication protocols and license agreements. Eventually you will have violated a license agreement just by being born. Unfortunately the creators of this system forgot to include an off button. People tell me that my Luddite way of thinking is not practical. It would never work in the world today. So they ignore what I say. Computers dominate us in the work place. They dominate us at home. They dominate how we spend money. 50 years ago if you told someone that these machines would dominate our lives many would have thought your crazy. They would have thought that man could never get that week. Computers were supposed to be just luxuries not necessities.
Machines will surpass us in all way, including sense of humor. Someday a machine will laugh at you. What he says while making fun of you might actually be true. Imagine damaging your life and being so weak and stupid that you could not fix it. In the old days, when the situation became too hot, a person could scream, “All my relations.” Someone would help. Today people scream and get nothing. Has mankind become so weak that we let ourselves become this way? Domesticated animal are a lot dumber than there wild ancestors. When the machines finally delete us we will no longer be the noble savages that we once were. Instead the last humans will be powerless, incompetent fools.
Eventually the tools man created will abandon us. If man does survive he will become a kind of scavenger. Segregated from the greater artificial civilization. Life will be short and cruel in the ghettos of the future. We will compete in the sewers with rats and roaches. Perhaps a machine will throw us some scraps. Your great grand kids will trample each other just get these scraps. They will laugh at each other’s misery. Eventually people will forget life was once different. They will forget that people once respected each other.
Perhaps you will still be alive on that day. You will be quite of old and most likely you will be trampled. This would not have happened if you had listened to me. Listen to me now you moron. You once said something about me not being practical. The sanitation unit will be here soon to dispose of your carcass. They will throw you in the oven and no one will remember you ever exited, but me. Am I the last person who remembers what humans had once been?
I use to work at a company that hosted web sites for postmodern and deconstructionist philosophers. They all had trouble getting there email to work so they would call me. I am not in the business of giving email support, but sometimes I would make the mistake of helping them just be nice. I tried to tell them that the world is made of atomic facts, such as the on button. This button has a single obvious universal meaning. If they used their fingers for empirical investigation and applied logical positivism they could discover the purpose of this button. Pushing button coincides with colors appearing on the main screen. Let us make a leap of faith and assume the coincidence is significant. But they do not do that. Instead they would tell me about how many academic degrees they had. I don’t care. Just push the button. They would refuse to push the button because they paid good money for the computer and did not see why they should have to push a button every time they wanted there email. Buttplug! I have other things to do than talk to them about this.
Next they will get angry and start to threaten to call lawyer and sue me. They claim that they are losing millions of dollars because I am not helping them. I could never understand why such people refuse to help themselves. I have nothing against someone who wants to be a blind monad, unless they call me, waste my time and refuse to listen. They could read the instruction manual, or they could pretend that the button does not exit and try an alternative method. Instead they start calling me over and over again, every ten minutes, like a psycho stalker, and they become more combative with each call.
At this point our friend on the phone will enter revenge mode. He no longer cares if his problem is taken care of. He just wants to destroy. The anger will build up in him for days, weeks, months and years. Seeking revenge on someone who tied to help him becomes his only goal in life. Such people are quite common. They never got their email. Anyone who knows a little about computers has been through a similar conversation with someone who wants help but is too stupid to cooperate. Best thing to do is play dumb and say that you do not know what they’re taking about early in the converstion. They will leave and go find someone else to hate.
Everyone has been in a situation where you might not know what to do. Some people will stop and think until they find a solution. Feeble-minded people will call a lawyer. I use to hike on wilderness trails. Sometimes I would lose the trail. Inexperienced hikers will end up walking around in circles. The easies way out of this is to back track until you find the trail again. Always pay attention to where you’re at. Everyone has strengths and weak points, which we can learn from. Know they self and you will be master of your domain.
I have always had trouble getting people to listen to me. Many people search for the meaning of life. I happen to know what it is. It would only take about ten second for me to tell you what it is. I have never been able to get anyone to shut up and listen for the whole ten seconds. Unfortunately I cannot write down what it is. It is something that can only be spoken.
I once saw a Skinhead try to push a Mexican. The Mexican refused to be pushed. The Skinhead said, “I am the master race. I have the right to push you any time I want.” The Mexican said, “Your only the master race if I let you push me.”
We do not belong to them. You know what to do. Get away from the machine. Do something else. Take a walk around the block. Don’t just sit by the machine all day. It is killing you. Stop all the downloading.
Perhaps this pleasure I sought was like the cheep thrill of an addictive drug. I seek an unnatural upgrade when what I should be looking for is a normal life. The first upgrade is what started this mess. Each upgrade makes it worse. Are we on our way to destruction? Is there no chance to survive?
Don’t worry coppertop, I know the how to fix it, but I am not going to tell you. I will give you a clue. Our prostitute was able to read people by looking into there eyes. Start by looking there. It is not too late. The human factor has not been deleted yet.
Why is the world as it is today? Why did the 20th century do this to us? Consider this.
Thought = language = Culture
Such a Formula was the obsession of so called smart people of the 20th century. They were morons. A few of the old fools are still alive. Find them. Cover them with tar and feathers. For they have given us the wrong path.
Here is another formula. Instinct = Nature = Quality
Think about it. Civilized men try to become masters of all they survey; yet the quality of life is ignored. Aldo Leopold knows an alternative to the civilized. He talks about the increased fertility of a healthy forest. He also talks about the man of leisure, who chose to do his own thing. In both cases he is talking about quality. The man needs a healthy environment. I predict that in the next century we will gain a greater understanding of the inner ecology inside mankind. We will learn how this inner ecology requires a healthy environment. We will see how the two ecologies are connected. 20th century psychology, sociology and anthropology will be considered poorly written fiction.
People today have little idea what technology is about to do to us. The culture of accelerated progress will drill deeper and deeper attacking each part of our humanity. Unfortunately most people will only realize the damage after the damage has been done.
Perhaps the Earth needs quality men. A few good men can save everyone else. They would give us hope. We could see that some people are still alive. They would be the proof that some people have not all ended up as Internet losers. You might accuse me of being an ecofascist who enjoys goose-stepping for a matriarch called nature. Your right.
What are you suppose to do when your anus is bleeding and your spoon is too big? You know dame right! The Super Bowl is gay. Who wants a body message?
Deconstructionist philosophers nit pick ideas alone. This is a solitary vice. Complete by themselves. I do not want this supplement to real life. I want the presence of a real person - someone who can also feel - someone who has intentions of there own that I can explore. What would Leopold do in this situation? I do not know. I just for do not know enough about his personality. What would Russell do? Who knows? He was a perverted old fool. What would a postmodernist do? They would do nothing, because they have no faith in truth, justice or the American way. What would the luddite Edward Abbey do if he were alive today? He would get drunk and jump on the 75-year-old prostitute. Let us return to the old whore. She seems to know something about instinct. Perhaps she can put us on the right track. For great Justice. Zardoz has spoken.